Avoid Social Issues, GOP Urged (Homosexualists, Pro-Aborts Co-opt Tea Party Movement)

Politico ^ | Sunday, November 14, 2010 | Ben Smith and Byron Tau

[kristinn]

A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president and who has been known to post images of his bare torso to Twitter — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.

As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.

"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."

That indifference is essentially the point of the gay conservative group.

SNIP

TEXT OF LETTER

Dear Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner

On behalf of limited government conservatives everywhere we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement.

Poll after poll confirms that the Tea Party’s laser focus on issues of economic freedom and limited government resonated with the American people on Election Day. The Tea Party movement galvanized around a desire to return to constitutional government and against excessive spending, taxation and government intrusion into the lives of the American people.

The Tea Party movement is a non-partisan movement, focused on issues of economic freedom and limited government, and a movement that will be as vigilant with a Republican-controlled Congress as we were with a Democratic-controlled Congress.

This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check.

Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party’s message and use it to push their own agenda – particularly as it relates to social issues. We are disappointed but not surprised by this development. We recognize the importance of values but believe strongly that those values should be taught by families and our houses of worship and not legislated from Washington, D.C.

We urge you to stay focused on the issues that got you and your colleagues elected and to resist the urge to run down any social issue rabbit holes in order to appease the special interests.

The Tea Party movement is not going away and we intend to continue to hold Washington accountable. Sincerely,

Christopher R Barron
Chairman of the Board, GOProud

Andrew Ian Dodge
Coordinator, Maine Tea Party Patriots

Pam Stevenson
Coordinator, Arizona Tea Party Patriots

Dianna Greenwood
Executive Director, New American Patriots (Ashland, OH)

Jim Mason II
Chairman and State Coordinator, Nebraska’s Tea Party Patriots

Ralph King
Co-coordinator Cleveland Tea Party Patriots
Co-coordinator State of Ohio Tea Party Patriots

Jack Lien
Coordinator, Tea Party Patriots of Great Malls (Montana)

Tammy Bruce
National Radio Talk Show Host

JP Weber
Coordinator, Annapolis (Maryland) Tea Party

Doug Welch,
Blogger and member Southern Illinois Tea Party

Bruce Carroll
Conservative Activist and Blogger

Pam Stout
Coordinator, Sandpoint Idaho Tea Party Patriots

Dan Blatt
Conservative Activist and Blogger

Everett Wilkinson
Coordinator, Florida Tea Party

Jimmy LaSalvia
Executive Director, GOProud

Paul Crockett
President Santa Clara (California) Tea Party
David Thor Andreasen
Cumberland County (Maine) Tea Party

[bobzeetwin]

Here is a clue you are not bright enough to understand on your own: Unemployed people deprived of their ability to work by a socialist government tend to move right in their thinking

You must be brighter than me. I have not seen one of my tenants move right in thier thinking. The entitlements they all get seem to be a career choice to be handed down. I will start paying closer attention so as to observe the move to the right. I have some third generation welfare people with subsidized rent, food stamps, wic, etc. How long before I see the move? If they don't make a move soon, me and a bunch of other business people will be forced to throw in the towel due to taxes and regulations.

[behzinlea]

By the far the most important thing the government did was not be in the way.

Too late. The government is not only in the way, it is aggressively pushing forward with so-called hate-crime legislation, government-supported abortion and euthanasia hidden in footnotes of Obamacare, promotion of gay marriage through the courts, and forcing open the military ranks to practicing homosexuals.

Liberals today are hell bent on using government to promote abortion, homosexuality, the destruction of the traditional family, and to silence and marginalize those who are opposed to this despicable agenda. To concentrate on fiscal conservatism to the exclusion of these important social issues is to cede a vital front of the war to the enemy.

The war is already joined. We cannot remain passive. This war MUST be fought on BOTH fronts. Lose either front, and we will ultimately lose the war.

[little jeremiah]

Screw you, ZOTTED troll!

The Constitution protects the RIGHT TO LIFE! Abortion is KILLING!

Looky here, VAfakeDoc got the ZOT.

[DJ MacWoW]

I see that you've been banned but before making stupid statements you might want to check history. There have been state laws against sodomy since the beginning of our country. They started being struck down by courts in the 60's. You know, during the "if it feels good, do it" hippie crap.

And pay particular attention to Virginia when Jefferson was Governor.

[Irish Rose]

Congress is there to attend to the affairs of the state, not opine. Their personal opinions don't matter. How they run the business of America does.

Their personal opinions on abortion don't matter to you, because you are not an unborn child and you apparently care very little about those who are. But for the lives that stand to be violently ended by abortion, and for those who recognize the value of those lives, the opinion of Congress on the matter is vital.

And saying that the states, not Congress, should decide on abortion is sheer evasion. The states cannot decide the matter. Why not? Because Congress is full of lawmakers whose personal opinions are pro-abortion, and the president often is pro-abortion, too, and so they fill the Supreme Court with justices who will protect abortion.

I understand that you don't care much whether or not the unborn are killed. But you have to understand that many others are not going to accept a Republican Party that is purportedly too busy cutting spending to bother about abortionists cutting up babies.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘they’re taking a Fundamentalist stance’

First time I’ve heard the Catholic Church called ‘Fundamentalist’.

[rogue yam]

Traditional social mores were never chiefly sustained or enforced by the power of the government (federal or state)...By far the most important thing the government did was not be in the way.

That was then, this is now. Now the government, and in particular the schools, are the main engines for promoting leftism and immorality. This battle has been raging for decades. We cannot unilaterally disarm. So long as our federal and state governments privilege and promote homosexuality, abortion and atheism then we will continue to produce "citizens" who lack the morality and rationality to provide for themselves and will instead vote for subjugation to the government.

Without papering over important differences, we all ought to be able to figure out a way to get behind the campaign to stop the liberal elite from taxing and regulating us into living our lives the way they think is proper.

Telling schoolchildren that they must accept homosexuality (and worse) as moral and that there is no God is the worst-spent government funding and the worst-conceived government regulation there is.

I agree that these things should not be federal issues. (They only are due to leftist judicial activism.) They should be decided in State legislatures (not courts). But the Tea Party movement is directed at all levels of government and I believe that Tea Party candidates for State legislature seats should campaign on all issues, including abortion, homosexuality, and government-enforced atheism.

[STARWISE]

Totally ... already shown his troll true colors; and just happened to be ironically drawn like a magnet to the BHO eligibility issue within a couple days of joining FR, if not a retread.

[little jeremiah]

Hey troll, trotting out the old “I know some gay guys and they are clean cut, monogamous, never visit Thailand to rape little boys, they’re against same sex marriage and gays in the military and they’re really nice quiet fellows” is way, way overused.

I know some homosexuals and some are okay but misled and some are rabid demoniac people.

If homosexuals didn’t like the “gay” agenda we’d hear them cricize it.

CRICKETS!

[50mm]

BugZapper ZOTs on VADoc1980 and counterpunch.

To be added or removed from the VK list, FReepmail Darkwing104.

[bobzeetwin]

The war is already joined. We cannot remain passive. This war MUST be fought on BOTH fronts. Lose either front, and we will ultimately lose the war.

No one is disagreeing with you. Just in the timing. Fight one battle at a time, then go to the next one.

[little jeremiah]

Trotting out the old “I know some gay guys and they are clean cut, monogamous, never visit Thailand to rape little boys, they’re against same sex marriage and gays in the military and they’re really nice quiet fellows” is way, way overused. Furthermore, it’s a LIE.

I know some homosexuals and some are okay but misled and some are rabid demoniac people.

If homosexuals didn’t like the “gay” agenda we’d hear them cricize it.

CRICKETS!

[MrEdd]

You look only at those granted welfare and receiving it.

In my part of the country, the money has run out and the state isn't going into debt to continue the bennies so even the eternal dole recipiants are getting hit.

I primarily referred, however, to the formerly working poor and middle class - many of whom are showing up in conservative churches for the first time in their lives.

Here in the Sherman/Dennison area, many of the evangelical churches are experiencing explosive growth.

I go to a small outreach church intended to reach drug users and alcoholics and lead them to a saving relationship with Christ. I have seen a lot of people working on changing themselves who (I suspect) would not be persevering were their economic prospects up to keeping them in the nigh perpetual state of inebriation they were in before.

[little jeremiah]

Wrong. Conservative Republicans win elections, socially leftist Rs do not (except maybe in MA which is a lost cause right now anyway).

[little jeremiah]

Maybe if we bring up the "social" issues we will lose some votes we need.

By turning the GOP into a socially moderate "Dem-lite" party elections are LOST!

[behzinlea]

No one is disagreeing with you. Just in the timing. Fight one battle at a time, then go to the next one.

You have a rattlesnake poised to sink its fangs into your ankle, and a constrictor about to coil itself around your neck. Which battle do you attend to first?

[little jeremiah]

Too late. The government is not only in the way, it is aggressively pushing forward with so-called hate-crime legislation, government-supported abortion and euthanasia hidden in footnotes of Obamacare, promotion of gay marriage through the courts, and forcing open the military ranks to practicing homosexuals.

Liberals today are hell bent on using government to promote abortion, homosexuality, the destruction of the traditional family, and to silence and marginalize those who are opposed to this despicable agenda. To concentrate on fiscal conservatism to the exclusion of these important social issues is to cede a vital front of the war to the enemy.

The war is already joined. We cannot remain passive. This war MUST be fought on BOTH fronts. Lose either front, and we will ultimately lose the war.

BRAVO!

[darkangel82]

IATZ!

[little jeremiah]

I saw him yesterday or the day before. He did not appear to be a real noob.

Too bad he dallied on this thread! HA HA.

[Semper Mark]

"DON’T TREAD ON ME!!

Troll sighting!!

ZOT!!"

Ouch! Well, Doc, we won't be calling a Corpsman for you so I guess you'll just have to bleed out.

(Slowly and painfully I hpoe.)